What you see pictured here is probably my zillionth Tall Pike’s Place coffee, which I generally sneak out of the office to enjoy around 2 or 3 pm with my buddy Joe. The ritual goes something like this:
Dial Joe’s extension. Continue to be amused by Joe’s trademark “Yeahp?” of an answer.
“Got time?” I ask.
“Can’t do it. I got a 3:30 and I’m in the shit.”
“That’s crap. Come on. Ronnie James Dio wouldn’t put up with this, it isn’t civilized. We’re grown men. We can have a cuppa goddamn coffee. Fuck your 3:30.”
Or some such exchange. Inevitably we walk a short portion of Boston’s Freedom Trail, which seems to begin at the Borders at Downtown Crossing and within 20 paces leads to a bustling closet of a Starbucks. It’s staffed with twenty-somethings who to me resemble teenagers. They listen to singles, not albums, and possess an uncanny ability to serve coffee ironically.
Whoever happens through the door first will usually order and pay. Today it’s me.
“Two tall Pikes.” I say.
“Two tall Pikes?” the guy at the counter says.
I nod. I look down. There’s a coffee mug filled with unfamiliar green plastic…things. “What’re these?”
Joe says, “Whattaya got there, some strirrahs?” playing up his Belmont accent.
Guy at Counter says, “No, no they’re for your cup.” He demonstrates by sliding the alien object into the little sippy-hole in top of Joe’s cup. “See? Keeps the coffee warm, and keeps it from spilling out.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I’m looking at Counter Guy, and realizing that my incredulity is lost on him. Just another asshole customer with an unsolicited opinion. Next…
I look at Joe. “How the hell am I supposed to drink this if the hole’s plugged up? Do we really need more plastic shit from Starbucks? I don’t think these guys are even a Fair Trade organiz…”
Joe tells me to shut up, and I see his point. Who wants to listen to a rant about corporate responsibility on their coffee break?. Besides, the appearance of this kind of innocuous doo-dad wouldn’t have phased me in 1983, so why am I so uptight about it now?
Maybe it’s the proliferation of media channels that’s got everyone talking about the same stuff; global warming, economy in the shitter, American Idol, Twitter, the price of gas and work work work. So much common thematic blah-blah actually seems to facilitate worry about little plastic green sippy hole plugs and their carbon footprints. Is it possible that when the world was less connected, when there were fewer information portals, we were a more open-minded species? Did we thrive on discovery, because there was more hunting involved? The hunt for information, the thrill of finding something interesting – and the limited availability of interesting things – maybe that’s what’s missing now, and the reason I take such offense at the mug full of lid-plugs (what are these things called anyway?).
Perhaps I’m just too plugged-in to the throbbing, digital, hi-def mass conversation. In a Facebook-less, Google-less world I’d probably still conclude that the LidPlug(TM) is a needless piece of environmental waste. But maybe my mind wouldn’t immediately leap there, ignoring the novelty of it and the fact that somebody else might actually think it’s kind of cool. Which by extension would make me a little less uptight and a little more rock and roll. And rock is good.
I’m digging deep now and we haven’t even found a table yet. Joe doesn’t want to hear about it, so I decide to bother a random stranger with this curiosity. She’s sitting alone at one of the little round tables, dressed like she stepped out of an Anthropologie window display. Long curly hair and the obligatory Uggs, she’s pretty in a Kate Hudson Almost Famous kind of way. Joe is eyeing me with suspicion and horror as I approach her, brandishing my LidPlug. I’m thinking She’s gonna think these are stupid too. She’s GOT to.
“Have you seen these?” I enthusiastically present the plug and demonstrate it’s purpose with great exasperation. “I really couldn’t believe it when I saw this thing, yaknowwhatImean?”
With no hesitation she smiles at me brightly and says, “I know – aren’t they just great!?!”
I feign polite agreement and sit down, defeated. Across the table, Joe’s looking at me with an eyebrow raised to Spock-like proportions, his judgement of the situation made more than clear by the accompanying smirk: Asshole.
Lucky for both of us, we’ve got other other fish to fry. A lively discussion about the state of creativity in the world ensues, with some Heavy Metal philosophy thrown in for good measure – a thread loosely held in place by a green plastic stick. 20 minutes later we’re both back at the office, plugged-in once again.
